ISIS Is A Disgrace To True Fundamentalism The New York Times

9/17/22, 3:47 AM ISIS Is a Disgrace to True Fundamentalism - The New York Times

Ehe New York Cimes

The Opinion Pages

Opinionator
A Gathering of Opinion From Around the Web
THE STONE

ISIS Is a Disgrace to True Fundamentalism

By Slavoj Zizek September 3, 2014 2:45 pm

The Stone is a forum for contemporary philosophers and other thinkers on issues
both timely and timeless.

It has become a commonplace in recent months to observe that the rise of
the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, is the latest chapter in the long story
of the anticolonial awakening — the arbitrary borders drawn after World War I by
the great powers being redrawn — and simultaneously a chapter in the struggle
against the way global capital undermines the power of nation states. But what
causes such fear and consternation is another feature of the ISIS regime: The
public statements of the ISIS authorities make it clear that the principal task of
state power is not the regulation of the welfare of the state’s population (health,
the fight against hunger) — what really matters is religious life and the concern
that all public life obey religious laws. This is why ISIS remains more or less
indifferent toward humanitarian catastrophes within its domain — its motto is
roughly “take care of religion and welfare will take care of itself.” Therein resides
the gap that separates the notion of power practiced by ISIS from the modern
Western notion of what Michel Foucault called “biopower,” which regulates life in
order to guarantee general welfare: the ISIS caliphate totally rejects the notion of
biopower.

Does this make ISIS premodern? Instead of seeing in ISIS a case of extreme
resistance to modernization, one should rather conceive of it as a case of

perverted modernization and locate it into the series of conservative

modernizations which began with the Meiji restoration in 19'4-century Japan

https://archive.nytimes.com/opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/09/03/isis-is-a-disgrace-to-true-fundamentalism/ 1/4

9/17/22, 3:47 AM ISIS Is a Disgrace to True Fundamentalism - The New York Times

(rapid industrial modernization assumed the ideological form of “restoration,” or

the return to the full authority of the emperor).

The well-known photo of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the ISIS leader, with an
exquisite Swiss watch on his arm, is here emblematic: ISIS is well organized in
web propaganda as well as financial dealings, although these ultra-modern
practices are used to propagate and enforce an ideologico-political vision that is
not so much conservative as a desperate move to fix clear hierarchic
delimitations. However, we should not forget that even this image of a strictly
disciplined and regulated fundamentalist organization is not without its
ambiguities: is religious oppression not (more than) supplemented by the way
local ISIS military units seem to function? While the official ISIS ideology rails
against Western permissiveness, the daily practice of the ISIS gangs includes full-
scale grotesque orgies, including robberies, gang rapes, torture and murder of
infidels.

Upon a closer look, the apparent heroic readiness of ISIS to risk everything
also appears more ambiguous. Long ago Friedrich Nietzsche perceived how
Western civilization was moving in the direction of the Last Man, an apathetic
creature with no great passion or commitment. Unable to dream, tired of life, he
takes no risks, seeking only comfort and security: “A little poison now and then:
that makes for pleasant dreams. And much poison at the end, for a pleasant
death. They have their little pleasures for the day, and their little pleasures for the
night, but they have a regard for health. “We have discovered happiness,’ say the
Last Men, and they blink.”

It may appear that the split between the permissive First World and the
fundamentalist reaction to it runs more and more along the lines of the
opposition between leading a long satisfying life full of material and cultural
wealth and dedicating one’s life to some transcendent cause. Is this antagonism
not the one between what Nietzsche called “passive” and “active” nihilism? We in
the West are the Nietzschean Last Men, immersed in stupid daily pleasures, while
the Muslim radicals are ready to risk everything, engaged in the struggle up to
their self-destruction. William Butler Yeats’ “Second Coming” seems perfectly to
render our present predicament: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are
full of passionate intensity.” This is an excellent description of the current split
between anemic liberals and impassioned fundamentalists. “The best” are no

https://archive.nytimes.com/opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/09/03/isis-is-a-disgrace-to-true-fundamentalism/ 2/4

9/17/22, 3:47 AM ISIS Is a Disgrace to True Fundamentalism - The New York Times

longer able fully to engage, while “the worst” engage in racist, religious, sexist

fanaticism.

But are the terrorist fundamentalists really fundamentalists in the authentic
sense of the term? Do they really believe? What they lack is a feature that is easy
to discern in all authentic fundamentalists, from Tibetan Buddhists to the Amish
in the United States — the absence of resentment and envy, the deep indifference
towards the nonbelievers’ way of life. If today’s so-called fundamentalists really
believe they have found their way to Truth, why should they feel threatened by
nonbelievers. Why should they envy them? When a Buddhist encounters a
Western hedonist, he hardly condemns. He just benevolently notes that the
hedonist’s search for happiness is self-defeating. In contrast to true
fundamentalists, the terrorist pseudo-fundamentalists are deeply bothered,
intrigued and fascinated by the sinful life of the nonbelievers. One can feel that, in
fighting the sinful other, they are fighting their own temptation. This is why the
so-called fundamentalists of ISIS are a disgrace to true fundamentalism.

It is here that Yeats’ diagnosis falls short of the present predicament: The
passionate intensity of a mob bears witness to a lack of true conviction. Deep in
themselves, terrorist fundamentalists also lack true conviction — their violent
outbursts are a proof of it. How fragile the belief of a Muslim must be if he feels
threatened by a stupid caricature in a low-circulation Danish newspaper. The
fundamentalist Islamic terror is not grounded in the terrorists’ conviction of their
superiority and in their desire to safeguard their cultural-religious identity from
the onslaught of global consumerist civilization.

The problem with terrorist fundamentalists is not that we consider them
inferior to us, but, rather, that they themselves secretly consider themselves
inferior. This is why our condescending, politically correct assurances that we feel
no superiority toward them only makes them more furious and feeds their
resentment. The problem is not cultural difference (their effort to preserve their
identity), but the opposite fact that they already like us, that, secretly, they have
already internalized our standards and measure themselves by them.
Paradoxically, what the fundamentalists of ISIS and those like them really lack is
precisely a dose of that true conviction of one’s own superiority.

Slavoj Zizek is a Slovenian philosopher, psychoanalyst and social theorist at
the Birkbeck School of Law, University of London. He is the author of many

https://archive.nytimes.com/opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/09/03/isis-is-a-disgrace-to-true-fundamentalism/ 3/4

9/17/22, 3:47 AM ISIS Is a Disgrace to True Fundamentalism - The New York Times

books, including the forthcoming “Absolute Recoil.”

© 2017 The New York Times Company

https://archive.nytimes.com/opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/09/03/isis-is-a-disgrace-to-true-fundamentalism/ 4/4